A senior judge ignited a row over the use of genetics to fight crime yesterday when he called for everyone living in or visiting the UK to have a DNA profile registered on the national database.

Lord Justice Sedley, who is noted for his record as an upholder of civil liberties on the bench, said the current system, where DNA profiles are taken only from those who come into contact with the criminal justice system, was "indefensible".

His comments prompted anger from civil liberties groups and forced the prime minister's official spokesman to deny there were plans to bring in a universal database.

Lord Justice Sedley, one of the most experienced appeal court judges, first called for a universal database in a lecture at Leicester University in November 2004. Yesterday he told BBC News: "Where we are at the moment is indefensible. We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police, then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven't, it isn't."

He said disproportionate numbers of people from ethnic minorities were on the database. "It also means that a great many people who are walking the streets, and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free," he said.

The judge suggested everybody's DNA should be on file "for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention". Although the implications of a universal database were "very serious", he said it would be "manageable" and ultimately a fairer system.

Tony McNulty, a Home Office minister, said the government was "broadly sympathetic", but the judge had probably underestimated "the practicalities, logistics and huge civil liberties and ethics issue" involved.

Gordon Brown's spokesman said: "The prime minister is very supportive of the DNA database, which has been very successful in tackling crime, but there are no plans to introduce a universal compulsory or voluntary national database."

The UK's 12-year-old DNA database has 4m profiles and is the largest in the world, growing by 30,000 samples a month. According to the Home Office website, 5.2% of the UK population is on the database, compared with 0.5% in the US.

Statistics released in June showed that the DNA profiles of 108 children under 10 had been stored and there were a further 883,888 records of children between 10 and 17. Last month it emerged that a profile is added every 45 seconds. Current thresholds allow for samples to be taken only from those arrested for a "recordable" offence, usually a crime punishable by imprisonment, but profiles stay on the database even if the individual is not later convicted. About a third of people on the database have not been convicted of a crime. The Home Office is reviewing the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which sets out the powers to take and retain biometric data. Issues under consideration include whether to keep profiles of those later found not guilty of a crime.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights organisation Liberty, said a database with DNA from convicted sexual and violent offenders was a "perfectly sensible crime-fighting measure". But "a database of every man, woman and child in the country is a chilling proposal, ripe for indignity, error and abuse".

The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, said a universal database would be "highly intrusive, and the more information collected about us, the greater the risk of false matches and other mistakes." David Davis, the shadow home secretary, called for a parliamentary debate on the issue. "The erratic nature of this database means that some criminals have escaped having their DNA recorded whilst a third of those people on the database - over a million people - have never been convicted of a crime," he said.

Backstory

Sir Stephen Sedley is far from a lock-'em-up judge. Before becoming a high court judge in 1992, he was a human rights barrister. On the bench he has been a noted upholder of civil liberties. He was one of three judges who upheld the right of the Chagos islanders, forced from their home when Britain leased the land to the US for an airbase, to go back.A strong advocate of free speech, he has also been in the forefront of developing stronger privacy rights.